


A Savor of the Heart

by drivingsideways



Series: The Thing Is [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, F/M, Historical Inaccuracy, M/M, my miranda barlow feelings are endless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-18 03:54:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11283231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drivingsideways/pseuds/drivingsideways
Summary: In some cultures, speaking the name of the dead is taboo.





	1. Taboo

**Author's Note:**

> These are three snapshots that are in the same universe as May It Happen To Me (All), and feature some minor original characters from that story, but it's not necessary to read that, to follow this one.
> 
> All mistakes are mine, and uh, I'm sorry I don't do historical or geographical accuracy well. (or at all)

**Nassau, August 1709**

The rain falls, great sheets of it, warm, relentless, turning the ground into reddish-brown slop. It is nothing like she has ever known, back- _home._ The window in the bedroom that refuses to stay shut swings on its hinges, a rhythmic squeaking. She must remember to ask James to fix it, when he returns.

 

_If he returns._

 

She’s rescued the chickens from what looked like certain death by drowning; their subdued clucking as they hop around the kitchen, picking -god knows what- off the floor is an oddly soothing counterpoint to the drone of the rain.

On days like this-there are many- there’s nothing to do but wander around these four rooms that make up her-their-house.

Twenty steps from the kitchen to the living room, forty to the first bedroom, ten to the next.

Repeat.

 

_On the nights he couldn’t sleep, Thomas would walk through the house, sometimes without a candle, so familiar and sure was he of the landscape. In the hour before dawn, after a particularly restless night, he would slip into her room, climb under the bedcovers with her. Curling around her, he’d settle with a small sigh, a small kiss to her nape, a mere huff of breath. She would shift sleepily, tangle their feet, hold him to her. Daybreak would find him fast asleep, an open parenthesis curved around the space left by her body._

Ten steps around the room, brings her to the bookshelf that had taken James months to make. Her fingers find the curling vines he’s carved into the wood, the simple star-shaped flowers and then drift over the spines of the ever-growing collection of books.

She’d brought with her only one of the books that are currently occupying this space; the one Thomas had inscribed, but hadn’t had a chance to gift to James before-

The rest of the books, those are ones that have caught James’ eye on his- expeditions.

 

James comes to her, bruised and bloody, sometimes with fresh scars forming, the skin already growing raw and red over a gash. James comes to her with things: books, a tea-set, a bolt of fine silk cloth, sheets of music, oddly shaped stones, once an iridescent shell of some long-deceased sea-creature. He brings her seeds, and plants, fragile things that need space and nurture. He places them in her hands, and says, gruff, without looking at her, they reminded me of you.

Her fingers drift to the copy of Meditations. She’d given it to him after they reached Nassau, months later. She doesn’t know why she’d held it back until then, buried with her clothes, in the small case of things she had salvaged. Perhaps it was because she hadn’t wanted to watch his face as he’d opened it, seen the inscription on the flyleaf.

Perhaps.

 

They do not speak his name aloud.

Not even on the day they get the letter telling them he’s dead.

 

That letter sits on the dining table now- already scratched and marked, true witness to her increasingly assured attempts at cooking.

 

_London, April 29 th 1707_

_Dearest Miranda_

_I do not know how to write this. Peter tells me that I should conceal it from you, but I think that would be a far worse cruelty than what you have already faced. Thomas is dead. Peter has heard that it was by his own hand, but we do not know for sure. There has been no announcement of a funeral, but I must believe that Lord Hamilton could not be made of such stone as to deny his only son a proper Christian burial._

_I’m so sorry, my love._

_Please, come home, back to us._

_Your friend, as always,_

_Marianne Ashe_

It had been raining like this, the day she opened that letter. Two years since James had stumbled out into the rain, and was carried home three days later by Mr.Gates, in a drunken stupor, a bruise mottling green and yellow on his cheek.

*

Some days, when they wake up in the morning next to each other, lids still heavy with sleep, there’s a moment where she sees the bewilderment she’s feeling, reflected in his eyes- a moment where they both think- _not him_ \- before they school their expressions, before they put on their faces, before their lips meet.

*

There are other letters.

_London, 20 th January 1706_

_Dear Miranda,_

_I received your letter begging my help in securing the release of Lord Thomas last week. I wish I could help you, my dear girl, but Lord Hamilton has made it very clear that anybody who interferes in his affairs will only be made to regret it, and that publicly. I will not remind you that I warned you, that this day might come, because it gives me no pleasure to be proven right in this matter. Whatever the circumstances of your departure, I want you to know, that if you wish to return to London,_ alone, _your aunt and I will gladly make arrangements for you. You are, despite everything, a Worthington, and we Worthingtons must stick together in times of need. So, I do entreat you, leave behind the past on that wretched island, and return to your family in all haste._

_Yours sincerely_

_Edward Worthington_

*

She hears there’s going to be a new Reverend for the parish. She hopes this Reverend Lambrick will be an improvement on his predecessor, who had never once entered their gates, but conducted all his – extremely brief- conversations standing outside it.

Perhaps the Reverend Mathews had felt it was better to be safe, than sorry.

*

_London, 30 th March 1706_

_Dear Madam,_

_It is with some surprise that I received your letter dated 30 th January. Please understand that all relations with the former Lieutenant James McGraw and the Admiralty are at and end, and will not, under any circumstances, be renewed. As for your entreaty regarding your husband, I regret to inform you that the Admiralty does not interfere in the private matters of citizens and as such, you might do better to appeal to Lord Hamilton himself, directly. _

_Sincerely,_

_Admiral Robert Hennessy_

_*_

In some cultures, she has read, speaking the name of the dead is taboo. It is bad luck, it calls the dead to you, and they will not come in peace.

 

*

_Thomas._

It comes out scraped and hoarse, ricochets off the wall and finds its way back, unerring, to her chest, making her stagger, reach for the nearest surface to steady herself.

Inhale, exhale.

Repeat.

 

She tries again: Thomas.

Louder this time, surer, calling, as though he were

_in his library, lost in his books, the latest shipment from Florence having just arrived. He’d delved right in, of course- he’s been gone for hours- when she opens the door, he looks up at her, his gaze sharpening, called back to her, here, now, his eyes lighting up, “Darling, I demand you give up whatever frolic you’ve planned for tonight because-_

_Thomas, laughing, delighted, walking into the Mediterranean in his breeches, loose shirt billowing, calling to her, and then coming back to drag her into the water with him, you’ve ruined my dress, you wretched man, and oh, kissing and kissing and kissing_

_Thomas, after a visit from his father, his smile not reaching his eyes, saying, well at least this time he limited his comments to the eccentricities of my tailor_

_Thomas, gasping above her, his face blitzed in pleasure, tangling his fingers in her hair_

_Thomas reading, softly, as Mr.Weston lay dying, if I have not love I am but a clanging cymbal; dry-eyed at his funeral, and later, she finds him huddled on the floor between the shelves in his library, his eyes red-rimmed- he saved me, he says, whispering it. I know, she had replied, for had she and Mr.Weston not had a silent pact between them, almost from the first time she entered this house as a bride, that they would forever put themselves between Thomas and his father- and now, she’s alone in that, but by all that is holy, she will always, always-_

Thomas, she says again, and it is _agony,_ this fire in her veins, this screaming in her bones, and it will not be quenched or silenced, not without a sacrifice.

I’m sorry, she says, and she doesn’t know whom she’s apologizing to: the man she didn’t save, or the one she’s about to sacrifice.

*

 

_London, July 25 th 1709_

_“……Lord Hamilton is on his way to South Carolina, on Her Majesty’s work, though it is all very secret, and Mr. Walters would be very unhappy if he found out that I’d told you that Lord Hamilton will be sailing on the Maria Aleyne….”_


	2. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a table set for two, the way they like it.

**England, August 1705**

“Well, darling, you’ve certainly led me a fine chase this evening”, she says, as she finally finds him, in the little bower at the far east corner of the grounds. She’d been to all the usual haunts- the library, the kitchen, his old room, the attic, and finally the stables- Thomas has spent all his early summers here, at his mother’s house, visits which had ended with her life, when he was ten. When the former Lord Haverfield, a curmdudgeon who’d lived a solitary life and had the temerity to die intestate, the estate had passed to Thomas, who was the closest blood-kin, being his nephew. A stroke of good fortune, she thought, because both Thomas and she loathed the Hamilton seat; and Lord Alfred Hamilton was only too happy to never have to host his _foolish son and That Woman_ at Ashbourne except as custom demanded at Christmas or Easter.  She’d forgotten about this little hideaway- it was hidden from view of the main hall, and indeed, only rarely encountered by most visitors to the grounds- one had to go looking for it. But when she’d enquired in the stables, John, bright-eyed and red cheeked, had stammered that he’d seen the Master headed _that-thataway, Ma’am, he bade me look to Ariel and rub her down_. It was clearly A Treat, because Daniel, who’d been the Head Groom forever at Haverfield, wasn’t inclined _to trust the young ‘uns, they had jumped up ideas, all o’ them, and not one could tell the arse-end of a horse from its teeth_. Miranda smiled her thanks, causing the blush to turn an even more furious red. _Boys_ , Miranda thinks as she makes her way in the direction that John had pointed her, _were so sweet, until they weren’t_.

 

Her husband, still dressed in his breeches and a loose shirt, is sitting on the stone steps that lead down into a small depressed bit of overgrown grass, his long legs, encased in brown boots, stretched out ahead. Startled out of his thoughts, he smiles, “I’d lost track of time”, and reaches up an arm to draw her down to sit beside him.

“That’s hardly novel behavior, dearest. I’m only surprised at the choice of hideaway.” She says, as she adjusts her dress. Alice is going to complain about the grass stains, _again._ She glances at him sideways- he hasn’t let go of her hand, and seems to have barely heard her, as he weaves his fingers between hers, his thumb caressing her skin softly, a slight frown creasing his brow.

She lets out a sigh and leans back. Stretching out her other hand behind her, to rest on it a little, she tilts her face to the sky. It’s been a brilliant few days, clear skies, the sun shining fiercely, all of Nature in wild and desperate bloom- the last gasp of summer. The sun splashes the sky in orange, violet and indigo; a chittering swirl of black weaves through it, flying westward. London, with its grime and bustle and -complications- feels faraway, irrelevant.

In silence suspended, like these last few months, she waits.

“I never asked you” he says, suddenly, on a huff of expelled breath, and when she looks at him inquiringly, he clarifies “about James. Before I- before we-“

_Finally._

“No”, she replies, softly, “you didn’t.”

It had never been necessary, before. They’d each been completely open about their lovers, ones that lasted a night, or a month or three; had discussed them, laughed about them, even, together, but they’d never shared one. A quirk of fate, she reflects, and then, more honestly: _or not_. In any case, it had been more often her than not; it wasn’t that Thomas didn’t enjoy the pleasure that bodies had to offer; he was a generous, passionate and inventive lover- it was just that he acted as if his body didn’t _matter. She_ herself had never been able to achieve that level of detachment; no, she loved it all, wanted it all- every sensation that the mingling of one body with another could bring, the earthy, grounding, emancipatory pleasure of it, the singing in her veins, in the involuntary sounds her lovers made over her, in her- and it had been that, in part, that had drawn her to James- she had wanted to _see_ him, in that moment, his body telling the truth that he was so clever at hiding; her lieutenant with his wry smile and military bearing, his hungry kisses- only, not _hers,_ anymore, indeed, if ever he had been.

The closer you are to a thing, the harder it becomes to see it.  

“It seems stupidly obvious now that I look back on it” Thomas is saying, echoing her thoughts, unaware, “but I didn’t see it coming.”

She raises an eyebrow at him, because a lack of self-awareness had never been one of his flaws.

He chuckles at that. “Oh, I knew I wanted him, I’m not _blind_ “-a pause- “I just didn’t know I _wanted_ him. He’s not- like the others,” he concludes, and there’s something wondering, and almost unbearably sweet in his voice.

 _No_ , she thinks, _he’s not._

It makes her heart ache a little, it makes her a little _afraid,_ for _him_ , for _them_. It makes her want to say, be careful, my darling, this could _ruin_ you.

“I feel like a callow youth, conducting his first affair”, he continues, with a short, rueful laugh, “He’s been gone scarce a month, and he will be back within another-and I am- not myself.” His mouth twists a little, and he takes a deep breath, before turning to face her directly.

“Do you – have I made you unhappy?”

She takes a few minutes to reply, as she considers it- as she has been, since that moment at the dinner.

She thinks of what she saw in their faces, in the bodies that she _knew,_ the thing that had made her look away.

“I don’t know what I feel” she replies, “which is-unsettling.”

His small smile is fond, and he squeezes her hand, which is still in his.

“He’s softened clay in your hands, you know” he says, and when she gives him a _look_ , rolls his eyes, “I’ve _watched_ him around you, dearest.”

“Would you stop fucking him if I asked?” she says, sharp enough that he looks at her in surprise.

“Would you?” he counters.

“Yes” she says, simply.

That arrests him, as though he’d never considered the possibility-

“It’s not my decision to make” he says, slowly, “and I know James cares for you a great deal. And I think”- he looks at her, careful- “I think you care for him too.”

She turns her face away, looks up. The sun has set now, a single star appears, faint in the still gathering twilight. They will have to go in soon, or both face the wrath of Mrs. Kent for being tardy about dinner: a table set for two, a simple meal, the way they like it.

He says again- gently _-_ “He’s not like the others.”  

She turns back to face him, holding his gaze, takes his other hand in hers, laces her fingers through his.

“No,” she says, “he’s not.”


	3. Death were no divorce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An afterlife, of sorts.

**_Port Royal, July 1717_ **

****

It’s raining, _again_. In the two weeks they’ve been here, there’s hardly been two days continuous without the skies opening; curtains of rain let down, turning the streets into rivers. Everything smells _wet_ , all the time. He’s impatient to be gone from here- the rain does his knees and joints no favours. Usually, he would be with James, canvassing the taverns, brothels, keeping their ears open for information about what has been going on in Nassau since the truce. But the entire process is slowed down by the fact that _Captain Flint_ cannot just return from the dead-

 _James Barlow,_ he’d said, their first night in the town, as they looked for a room to rent for the night. They hadn’t discussed it before- hearing it, Thomas had felt his breath catch, twist painfully.

It’s been nine months since James was returned to him, exhausted, broken, but oh, alive, alive, _alive, in his arms._

Nine months since they sat, shoulder to shoulder on his stringy cot in a tiny room with one small skylight high above, and James had said, baldly, “Miranda’s dead.”

 _No,_ he had thought, _no, she can’t be. I would have felt it, my heart would have stopped, right along with hers, no-_

-but James had gone on-relentless, words tumbling over themselves, as though if he didn’t spill it out right then, he might never again be able to do it- the Maria Aleyne, the Spanish gold, Abigail Ashe, and Peter and Charlestown-James talked and talked and talked-

And he listened: not understanding all of it, no, and all the while, like a bell tolling in his head, like the screaming of the inmates at Bedlam, Miranda, Miranda, _Miranda_.

James had fallen asleep, finally. Curled into himself, on the cot- and that was- _different-_ he thought, and feels stupid, almost, for thinking it, for that being the thing that snagged his attention, amidst everything else. 

_Ten years._

_Miranda._

The stars are bright in the sky that night.

In the morning, they are careful around each other.

 

James hasn’t spoken her name since that day.

He’s not the only one.

 

Despite the rain, the town continues its business. It had overwhelmed him, at first, after the enforced isolation. Even at the plantation, with the hundred odd men it housed, at any given moment, there had been a sense of -distance. Nothing about Port Royal allows distance, he thinks. Even at night, the muted roar of the sea is a constant companion.

The sound of boots thumping up the stairs startles him out of his reverie- the door flings open, and James is there, filling the small space, his eyes finding Thomas first, unerring, followed by a- slight easing of his shoulders, unnoticeable unless you were looking for it. Thomas knows how it feels.

Perhaps, he thinks, they will not do this one day, some day.

James is dripping wet.

“Try not to get that all over the floor” Thomas says, drily.

A strange expression crosses James face at the words, so fleeting that Thomas thinks he may have imagined it.

But James doesn’t say anything, a small grunt, and then he starts stripping out of his clothes.

Thomas doesn’t look away, and after a moment, James quirks an eyebrow at him, his lips lifting a little.

He says nothing, just holds out his hand for the clothes, and _there, again-_

But James turns away then, steps toward the fireplace, bends down to attempt starting a fire with the damp kindling.

 

Later, after a meal of broth and bread, sent up by Anne from the kitchen, they lie on the bed, Thomas under the covers, James on it. “I have something for you”, James says, reaching out for his still damp trousers. From the pocket, he retrieves a small package wrapped in oilskin and tied with a small string. It’s a slim volume of Donne, the print so small as to be almost unreadable.

Perhaps James expects him to read it aloud, to him. _Had_ _Miranda_ -

Instead, he says, deliberate: “Did you know it was Miranda who brought him to my attention?”

He keeps his eyes on the cover, slowly running his hand over the brown leather, feels, rather than sees James stiffen.

When James speaks, it’s in a voice devoid of inflection. “No, I didn’t.”

_“The sun itself, which makes times, as they pass,_

_Is elder by a year now than it was_

_When thou and I first one another saw:_

_All other things to their destruction draw,_

_Only our love hath no decay;_

_This no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday_ ,-

She gave that to me on our seventh anniversary.”

He shifts on his side, toward James, still lying stiff on his back on the thin covers.

Continues, softly,

_“Two graves must hide thine and my corse;_

_If one might, death were no divorce.”_

James turns his face then-away- says, choked, “ _Stop_.”

Thomas is suddenly _furious._

He sits up on the bed.

“Is this what you did with her then?” he asks, “Bury me, a thousand fathom deep, leaving her alone in that house, with no friends, no family, nobody to turn to, while you waged a war on the world?”

James is across the tiny room in an instant, and he is trembling.

“She had ten years of memories with you” he snarls, “I had six goddamn months!”

He’s out of the bed too, and he’s-yelling-he realizes, almost surprised- “You were supposed to take care of her! Ten goddamn fucking years James, I _survived_ it, thinking- at least-at least- _you_ got away, at least _she_ was _safe_ , _loved_ -and you- _you_ -”

James is white as sheet, still trembling, but when he speaks, his voice is oddly calm.

“Do you think I stopped loving her?”

It’s that eerie calm that helps Thomas catch his breath, say quietly, “I think you stopped _seeing_ her.”

He means it to hurt, he cannot help it, and when had he become- this _cruel_ \- but it’s been _ten_ years, and he’s still here, breathing, living, and Miranda, his bright, beautiful girl, _his_ _miracle_ -

James flinches then, his face an open wound, and Thomas is- he wants to take James in his arms, wants to kneel at his feet, wants to beg his forgiveness, wants to beg _her_ forgiveness, as he has, every night- if he had listened to Miranda, if he had listened to _James – as your friend, it ought not to be thought of-_ but he had brought ruin on them all, and James had paid the price for him, _she_ had paid the price for him- and the weight of that knowledge is enough to make his knees crumple to the floor-

James moves then, but only to gather his shirt, shove his legs into his still wet trousers- in a haze, Thomas watches him leave, hears the door slam, as though from a great distance.

 

He had begun to forget them, after a few years. Losing bits of them: the exact shade of her eyes, the shape of James’ ears. Oh, he could still quote you entire sections of the Illiad from memory, in the original Greek, but other things, the simple things, those had begun to fade. Try as he would, he couldn’t be sure if his memory of Miranda’s laugh, was based in fact, or distorted by time and imagination. He had constructed elaborate fantasies around them: picturing them in Rome, or Amsterdam, or Paris. By the sea. In a small cottage in a glen. In Boston, even.

And now James is here; and all of it is shown up for what it is- the pathetic, wishful fantasy world created by a man who had no control over his own life or body.

James is here: the one who had the _real_ Miranda, in flesh and blood, for ten long years, and Thomas is hungry for her, for every scrap of _her_ , every scrap of _them_ , their life together, whatever it was- it would be- _true_ \- but James- James would deny him that.

 _I am greedy_ , he thinks, _and cruel_.

 _I am not the only one who lost her_.

 _I am not the one who had to watch her corpse laid out in a public square_.

Whatever guilt _he_ feels, he _knows_ that James feels it twice as much.

That James will never forgive himself.

And _yet_.

He drags himself to his feet. His joints _ache_.

Once, he had taken an ignominious tumble from a horse, had been laid up for two months. He had been a terrible patient, he recalls, chafing at the confinement, even when he was able to move around with some help. He had set the whole household by its ears, until Miranda stormed into the bedroom one day, and told him to _stop being a damn child, Thomas._ The sudden memory makes him laugh aloud, and he sees her sharply in his mind’s eye, as she was that day, in a peacock blue gown, her brown eyes flashing.

If she were here-if he were to close his eyes now, and count to ten, fifteen, twenty- when he opened them and turned around, would she- be there, with her fondly mocking smile, would she say-what would she say?

 _I don’t know how to do this without you, my love,_ he thinks. _I cannot be Thomas anymore, not yours, not James’. And you are not here to show me how to be someone else._

He remembers that dawn, so long ago- _twenty years now-_ when they had stood on the docks, and he had watched the early sun caress her face, not softening its angles, no, instead sharpening them against the soft dawn- waiting with his heart thudding in his throat, for her to make her decision. The touch of her hand against his cheek. How they had held each other, after, for a long time.

The rain has ceased, though clouds still hang dark and stormy overhead. He hears the clock downstairs chime the hour.

Seven o’ clock.

He picks up the volume that James had brought for him.

 

It’s almost midnight when he hears a soft knock on the door. He sits up in the bed, expecting James to open the door. But the door doesn’t open.

“Come in”, he calls.

It _is_ James.

Thomas had expected him to be drunk, perhaps, if he made his way back tonight, at all.

Instead, James looks sober.

He stands just inside the door, looking exhausted, and unsure of his welcome.

Thomas puts down the book, lifts the thin covers beside him.

 

They lie on their sides, facing each other, a half foot of space between them.

“Did I ever tell you the story of how Miranda and I got into a brawl at White’s?” asks Thomas, softly.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not the river as a fact, but the winter river,  
> and that river in June as two rivers.  
> We feel it run through our nature, the water  
> smelling of wet rotting just before spring,  
> and we call it love, a wilderness of the mind.  
> Mediterranean light as provender of women.  
> All of it contingent. This version of me  
> differs from another version as a vector product.  
> The body is a condition of the spirit.  
> The snow sifts down from the pines in the noon  
> and makes the silence even louder. A tumult  
> of singing when we cross the border of courtesy  
> into a savor of the heart. Each of us tempered  
> by the other, altered in ways more truly us.  
> We go into the secret with the shades pulled  
> down at dawn. Like a house on fire in the sunlight.  
> We enable God to finally understand there is  
> a difference between you sitting in the clearing  
> confused by moonlight and you sitting in the bare  
> farmhouse amid kerosene light. The two of you.  
> \- Jack Gilbert, “Tasters for the Lord”


End file.
